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Visual & Interoceptive Perception Lab |
The Avidan Lab studies the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying perceptual processes, from the external world to the internal state of the body. Based in the Department of Psychology and the School of Brain Sciences and Cognition at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the lab combines functional and structural brain imaging (fMRI), behavioral and physiological measures, and computational approaches to investigate brain connectivity and the neural basis of perception and individual differences.
One question, two directions
The brain's capacity to construct a coherent perceptual experience depends on two complementary sources of information: exteroceptive signals, arising from the external environment, and interoceptive signals, arising from within the body itself. The Avidan Lab investigates both as expressions of a single underlying question: how the brain integrates sensory information, whatever its origin, into perception, cognition, and behavior.
This question has guided the lab's foundational work on face perception, examining how the visual system builds a coherent representation of identity and how that process breaks down in congenital prosopagnosia. It also drives the lab's current focus on the gut-brain connection, asking how internal physiological signals shape cognition and emotional processing. A third line of work applies deep learning to structural brain imaging to model how the brain changes across the lifespan.
